• Principle 1: Embracing the messiness
• Principle 2: Sending subtle signals
• Principle 3: Taking smart risks
• Principle 4: Experimenting to stay ahead of uncertainty
• Principle 5: Counteracting fear
• Principle 6: Taking charge in a new environment

Catmull recently sat down with McKinsey’s Allen Webb and Stanford University professors Hayagreeva Rao and Robert Sutton for a far-ranging discussion that picked up where Creativity,Inc. left off. They delved deeply into Catmull’s rules for embracing the messiness that ofen accompanies great creative output, sending subtle signals, taking smart risks, experimenting to stay ahead of uncertainty, counteracting fear, and taking charge in a new environment–as Catmull did when he became the president of Disney Animation Studios.

Principle 1: Embracing the messiness

Embracing the messiness that ofen accompanies great creative output, which realy interested me. Just as Catmull saying that,

“Well, let’s make sure it doesn’t get too messy.”

THAT’S WHAT MATTERS. People know absolute clarity is damaging because it means that they aren’t responding to problems and thus they will stop short of excellence. There is also an interesting concept: entropy. Entropy is a state of disorder, confusion, and disorganization, which adhering to the second law of thermodynamic that, the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process. Chaos or whatever it takes describing uncertainty is the fundamention for all these in the world. It inspires, stimulates, reacts and creates. BUT WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT, clearity formulate our society and nature. A subtle balance between them will go on.

Principle 2: Sending subtle signals

Sending subtle signals. The subtle means balance, or, what it is said weighing. It is quiet difficult to handle this, taking lots of time to learn. But Catmull easily explain that,

Restarting something that doesn’t work is costly and painful, but in doing so, we send a major signal to our company. But there are other signals, too. We put short films at the beginning of our movies. Why? We are sending some signals. It is a signal to the audience that we’re giving them more than they’re paying for, a signal to the artistic community that Pixar and Disney are encouraging broader artistic expression, and a signal to our employees that we’re doing something for which we don’t get money. While they all know that we have to make money and want us to, they also want a signal that we are not so driven by money that it trumps everything else.

Not hard to understand, expressing what we want to in a proper way is what Catmull means. It means a lot.

Principle 3: Taking smart risks

Well, I was told if you want to get something unusual you must take risks since I was a junior school student. It’s easy to understand and accept it. Catmull said,

For me, there are three stages of risk. The first stage is to consciously decide what risks you want to take. The second is to work out the consequences of those choices; this can be fairly time consuming. The third stage is “lock and load,” when you do not intentionally add new risk. The trick is to make sure you do stage one–doing something that has risk as part of it.

The following example reminds me of what Gerald M.Weinberg write in his book The SECRETS of CONSULTING, saying that there is a rule called The Third Spell, that a counselor gives his best solution when sovling the third problem for his new employor. And he also mentioned, a good counselor should not serve the same employor for long. No matter what position you hire, as long as hiring a person for service, the newer one, the risk, is more creative but easy to fall apart.

For example, when you’re building a team for a film, if you have a team that’s worked together before and it’s exactly the same team, you know they know how to work with each other and that they can be very efficient. If you keep going this, though, you’re going to end up with an ingrown team. On the other hand, if you build a team with all new people, then they won’t see looming hazards, and they can fall apart. So you put together a blend. The mix of new and experienced people is a conscious risk taken at the beginning–stage one. The second stage then is getting the group working as a coherent whole for the heavy-duty work at the end of a production.

Principle 4: Experimenting to stay ahead of uncertainty

Experimenting to stay ahead of uncertainty. I did it when I was to doing a chemical experiment in my senior school, which might be the reason why I did it better than my classmates. Well, it’s easy for you to experimenting in your head before you doing a experiment which had been detailed in your book right your hand. But, just as Catmull saying that,” The difficulty is that when you’re running an experiment, it’s forward looking. We have to try extra hard to make it safe to fail.” And experiments are great in retrospect but not in prospect–because you’re scared.

Principle 5: Counteracting fear

People feared for uncertainty,because they don’t want to failed.

If we knew how this was going to end up, we’d just go ahead and do it.

Indeed, this is a tricky issue.

They put a greater burden on themselves than we intend to put on them. I think it’s natural because they never want to fail. One of the things about failure is that it’s asymmetrical with respect to time. When you look back and see failure, you say, “it made me what I am!” But looking forward, you think, “I don’t know what is going to happen and I don’t want to fail.” The difficulty is that when you’re running an experiment, it’s forward looking. We have to try extra hard to make it safe to fail.

Exactly, failure made one what he is. However, what we can’t overlook is that here is a palpable aura of danger around failure. So how to counteract its corrosive effects? In Catmull’s opnion:

Fear is built into our nature; we want to succeed and we respond physiologically to threats–both to real threats and to imagined threats. If people come into an organization like ours and they’re welcomed in, what’s the threat? Well, from their point of view, they’re thinking, “this is a high-functioning environment. Am I going to fit in? Am I going to look bad? Will I screw up?” It’s natural to think this way, but it makes people cautious.

When you go to work for a company, they tell you something about the values of the company and how open they are. But it’s just words. You take your actual cues from what you see. That’s just the way we’re wired. Most people don’t talk explicitly about it, because they don’t want to appear obtuse or out of place. So they’ll sometimes misinterpret what they see. For example, when we were building Pixar, the people at the time played a lot of practical jokes on each other, and they loved that. They think it’s awesome when there are practical jokes and people do things that are wild and crazy.

Now, it’s 20 years later. They’ve got kids; they go home after work. But they still love the practical jokes. When new people come in, they may hear stories about the old days, but they don’t see as much clowning around. So if they were to do it, they might feel out of line. Without anyone saying anything, just based on what they see, they would be less likely to do those things.

Meanwhile, the older people are saying, “what’s wrong with these new people? They’re not like we were. They’re not doing any of this fun stuff.” Without intending to, the culture slowly shifts. How do you keep the shift from happening? I can’t go out and say, “OK, we’re going to organize some wild and crazy activities.” Top-down organizing of spontaneous activities isn’t a good idea. Don’t get me wrong–we still have a lot of pretty crazy things going on, but we are trying to be aware of the unspoken fears that make people overly cautious. If you’re just measuring yourself by your outward success, then you’re missing a huge part of what drives people.

Principle 6: Taking charge in a new environment

Easy to understand, you should adjust yourself quickly to a new environment. How to do it, Catmull states that,

When you come in and you’re the new boss, everybody’s rather nervous. They’re trying to figure you out, too. So you should start with the assumption that everybody’s trying to do the best they can. For me, it’s not even putting people on a provisional basis by saying, “well, we’ll see how they work out.” I’m just assuming they’re going to work out. When they start to falter, you help them. And it’s only after you’ve tried to help them–and they don’t respond after repeated tries–that you do something.